Mechanics of Fate: Library of Babel
by sagenahui
Summary: l vignette l When we grasp this Law, The Law, we will be able to use it. Time and action will dissolve from their current unfinished state into one where each individual exerts the force of his will. We will own Nature. These are the Mechanics of Fate.


Disclaimer:   
I do not own Escaflowne, and I all I own about Borges is a copy of Ficciones.   
  


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Jorge Luis Borges's "Biblioteca de Babel" is one of the greatest short stories ever written. If the idea of it attracts you, I greatly recommend you grab a copy of _Ficciones _and check out Borges's twisted universes.  
  
  


Mechanics of Fate:  
Library of Babel  
  


  


I watched him. I watched him as he wrote the story of a universe known as The Library. He imagined endless and endless identical shelves with endless and endless identical volumes, containing all the combinations of characters possible for their prescribed length. Every book possible, from one that simply repeated the letters CMACMA monotonously throughout all its length, to the one, the great book, that contained in clear the position of any other book in the Infinite Library. In its endless size, the Library contained all Truth. He imagined the single, ultimate book, circular and with a continuous spine, that contained Everything. Everything ever done, Everything being done, Everything that will be done. 

This is Fate. The Ultimate Law of Nature.

And I watched him write this vision of Knowledge, centuries from my birth in a country far from my former home, and farther from my current one. Dreaming of universes and writing of impossible books that hold the answers to Everything. And I have that _book _ before me, as I see the workings of Fate. Could it be more meant? Could it happen otherwise? It couldn't. My understanding, my arrival, my rise to power, it was all leading to that instant, when I capture Fate, and Fate's Knowledge. The total and timeless Knowledge of Everything. When Time and Space and Action stop, for it is known what happens and what has, what is here and what is far, what can be done and what cannot. When the universe will wither to its proper state, unaffected by disorder. When nothingness comes and does what is meant, when each individual becomes total.

We will know. We have been waiting to know for so long. 

Some envisioned an endless quest for Knowledge, fueled by reason and stretching into the infinite. But all the years I learned and thought, the times I spent under a tree absorbed in observation and abstraction, they taught me nothing. No matter how much I advanced, I never arrived. I never saw the Truth. I never grasped the totality of it: the workings of the Universe.

It is out there. The Truth of All Things and All Times.

But unless we catch all Knowledge at all times, together, as a whole, we will never find it. We shall never arrive. We will be forever denied that state, that state of complete consequence unchallenged. No longer will the book keep us forever traveling. To get there, we most not think of progress but of arrival. We must grasp it all, and allow it to deliver us.

It's meant. It will happen. I shall see it. I shall steer it where I must. And we will no longer have to wait for infinite.

In the story the blind man wrote -the man with the cane and gray hair that reminded me the Latin and English I once knew, who taught me the Spanish I never did, the man who played with meanings and not words-, in his story, the Library would eventually be left empty, in its eternal self. It's sparse inhabitants, the lonely librarians, die out: they kill themselves out of frustration, or die of lung congestion from the dust. And all that will be left are the books, left be and unread. The flawless peace of Knowledge in its pure essence. 

Fate works in mysterious ways. I've worked tirelessly to see the day when we unravel the mystery, and we will no longer be its slaves. When we _know _pure will, it will deliver us. And only then we will be all. And the future will be infinite, and instantaneous. To end our journey by bringing us to its destination. When we grasp this Law, The Law, we will be able to manage it, use it. Time and action will dissolve from their current unfinished state into one where each individual exerts the force of his will on each instant. We will own Nature.

These are the Mechanics of Fate.

  
  
  



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